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Chapter Ten
Jasper
”—andthenhesaid,‘I ain’t paying for this,’ and I said, sweet as pie, ‘well sir, the contract you signed when you checked in says you’re liable for any damage you do the room or surrounding areas,’ and he said ‘it ain’t my fault that your fire alarm isn’t loud enough,’ and I said ‘well sir, maybe you shouldn’t have passed out with a cigarette in the bathtub and set our towels on fire,’ and he said—“
“Tonya?”I shouted from my office.The break room was right outside my door.It was a layout that I hated as much as they employees did.
“Yes, boss?”
“I’m pretty sure you told every single person that story already.Who’s left to tell?”
“Felipe hasn’t heard it yet,” she said.
I leaned sideways in my chair so I could see the old man who swept the dining room twice a day, when he didn’t nap through his duties.“Felipe is deaf.”
“He’s not deaf,” Tonya said, scandalized.
“Felipe,” I shouted.“What did the rude guest from Tulsa set on fire?”
Felipe continued to nod and smile.
“Huh,” Tonya said.“I thought he was just a good listener.”
“I’m trying to get some stuff done, Tonya,” I said.“Would you mind just keeping it down for the rest of your break?”
“Sure thing,” she called.I sighed and turned back to the budget spreadsheet that was giving me fits.I was off by $29.81, and I couldn’t find it to save my life.Sifting through the receipts again, I looked for any entries that Flint or my mother had made.The two of them were the most likely to transpose a number or mistake a seven for a one.My brothers give me shit for being a neurotic bean counter, but someone has to keep this crazy enterprise in the black.
“Hey, boss?”Tonya said.
“Yes?”
“You seem kinda stressed lately.”
“Do I?”I said through gritted teeth.
“Snippy,” she said definitively.“You know my cousin Albert down in Arcadia?He was real stressed a couple years back because they got all that flooding.Albert was always a hothead, you know, and when he’d get mad the veins in his forehead would pop out all crazy.”
I raised my eyes, looking for patience on the ceiling.There was nothing up there but dusty ceiling tiles.“I remember Albert.Are you about to remind me he died of a stroke?”
“No.I was going to tell you that my other cousin River sent him some herbs to help him chill out.I could ask her for some, if you want.”
“They clearly didn’t work for Albert,” I said.“And I’m pretty sure River’s herbs are good old-fashioned pot.”
“I don’t think so,” Tonya said.“River’s not a drug dealer.She gives you a special bowl that you burn the herbs in, and you breath in the smoke.”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s not pot!My Bob says it’s been helping a lot with his shingles.Old Dr.Barnes says their coming along nicely, did I tell you?Oh, he suffered, my Bob did.You wouldn’t believe the burning!He said it was like ants beneath his skin, and he was barely sleeping, which meant I was barely sleeping—“
I rubbed at the knot between my eyes.“Tonya?Do you remember how I said I needed to get some work done?”
“Sure thing, boss.Bob always says I could talk the ears off a basset hound.Then I tell him he looks like a basset hound, and he says I sound like a basset hound—“
“Tonya?”
“Oops, I’m doing it again,” she said.“I swear, I won’t make a peep.”
“Thank you,” I said.I sorted my spreadsheet again, as if that would help me find the error.$5500 for trash removal, that couldn’t be right.Flint had a bad habit of writing his fives like the letter S, and sometimes I read them as dollar signs.Experimentally, I changed the number in my spreadsheet.
